Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Mary Volmer's Reliance, Illinois, is a book I've been enjoying in slow sips, like a glass of very old sherry. It rewards slow reading, for Mary's prose is unlike any other writer's. I first got to know Mary through her novel Crown of Dust, which for a Gold Rush novel is unusually dark, somber, laden with ochre. This isn't the ebullient "Westward, ho!" novel...it's about the people who didn't strike it rich and got stuck in a part of the west not well traveled. Its quiet beauty is memorable. But I digress...I'm talking about Reliance now!

Again set in the 1800s, Reliance is about a small town and its secrets, and one girl at the center of it all. Look at this gorgeous cover.

I asked Mary to do an interview on my blog and she agreed to answer these three questions. Mary's doing a reading at Face in a Book bookstore in El Dorado Hills, California, this Friday the 22nd at 6:30 p.m. I'll be there, and I hope I'll see you there too! Mary's a great presenter, and it's sure to be a fun and witty night!

11. Why are you so drawn to
the 1800s?

Mom always had
biographies and historical novels lying around the house.When I was a girl, she read me books such as
Johnny Tremain (a revolutionary war
novel), and 19th and early 20th century authors like
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott. I suppose it’s no surprise my
imagination turned to the past when I started making up my own stories. I guess
another reason is that when I started writing seriously I was living abroad in
Wales, a country with a rich history, physically apparent in the castle ruins
and standing stones that graced the landscape of my university town,
Aberystwyth. Living there, I felt oddly compelled to look back on the history
of my own town and country, and also to question the national narratives, those
simplified (often sanitized) origin stories, I learned in school. I discovered
the relatively short history of the United States was full of vibrant and
volatile landscapes, contradictory accounts and fabulous characters. It seemed
natural to write about them. And the disconcerting fact of the matter is, we’re
dealing today with many of the same issues and fears that consumed us
generations ago.

2. Your characters are often downtrodden, powerless. Can you address that?

I’m drawn to
survivor stories and tales of resilience, and I’m equally drawn to stories
about women, who in the 19th century were largely downtrodden. Until
the latter half of the century, women possessed few economic or political
freedoms and had little access to education. While they were not universally
powerless, any authority they wielded had social consequences far more serious
than the many layered stigmas powerful women endure today. I’m fascinated by
the lives of these women and the communities they loved and struggled within.
If history is written by the victors, I think an argument can be made that
fiction (a great deal of it, at any rate) is written for the downtrodden, the
forgotten, the novel and unnamed.

3. What are you working on now?

I’ve been
working on three projects, but will need to settle into one of them in the next
month or two (or none will get finished!). The first is a contemporary novel
set in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, the second is a detective novel set in two
time periods: contemporary and colonial Virginia. The third is set in Boston,
Northern England and South America after WWI. That’s a vague answer, I know,
but I don’t want to give too much away! And, of course, the stories will change
as I write them.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

I grew up in the capitol of Vermont, and it is the most beautiful place in the world. I hadn't been back in literally decades before we went two years ago, and this year we returned to see the lovely Fourth of July bunting.

This is the City Hall, which used to contain the police department, but I noted that has moved to a standalone building in its back parking lot.

This is the fire station.

This is a magnificent indie bookstore. There are actually two downtown--amazing for a city with a population of less than 8,000!

And this is a sign in a storefront that cracked me up. Yes: this is Montpelier. Thanks for being a great place to grow up!

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About Me

I write historical novels. The Witch's Trinity is about medieval witchcraft, Woman of Ill Fame is about a Gold Rush prostitute, and House of Bellaver is about a haunted 1800s house museum. The Murderer's Maid: a Lizzie Borden Novel tells the American legend from the point of view of the maid Bridget Sullivan.
I'm fascinated by a lot of stuff and blog about it: history, road trips, suffrage, museums, the Gold Rush, witchcraft, murder, Victorians, cursed Egyptian tombs.